August 2006

Laura Ingraham on her radio show this morning, was talking about ways Jimmy Carter can entertain Iran’s former president Khatemi during his two week visit here in the states.

Here’s some other ideas for Jimmy to consider when entertaining President Khatemi. The old rabbit farmer must be breathlessly awaiting Khatemi’s arrival and excitedly planning all the activities they can share.

Since Khatemi plans on being here for two weeks he may want to attend the ceremonies remembering September 11th. Or go visit the Holocaust Museum.

Hopefully, the Secret Service will be watching Khatemi and Jimmy’s associates closely during the visit.

Carter’s term as president was dominated by the rupture in relations after the 1979 Iranian revolution and the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, where 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days until the day he left office.

Iranians made the overture for the meeting, and the Carter Center in Atlanta is working on the possible timing, said Phil Wise, the former president’s aide.

“President Carter, in his role since leaving the White House, has made his office and services and center available to basically anybody who wants to talk. He believes that it is much better to be talking to people who you have problems with than not to, and that’s the approach he takes now,” Wise said. “I can confirm that President Carter is open to a meeting if the former president of Iran would like to have one.”

Despite mounting tensions between Washington and Tehran over the latter’s nuclear program, the Bush administration issued a visa for Khatami yesterday, as well as for about a dozen family and staff members, for a visit lasting about two weeks, the State Department confirmed. Khatami is expected to arrive in the United States tomorrow.

Khatami, a reformer who served as president from 1997 to 2005, is scheduled to speak at the Washington National Cathedral on Sept. 7. His schedule may include speeches at the University of Virginia and to an Islamic group in Chicago. He may also pay a private visit to Thomas Jefferson’s home at Monticello, according to sources familiar with his trip. He will begin his visit in New York at a U.N. conference on the dialogue of civilizations.

The White House said yesterday that Khatami had been invited by private organizations and is not part of the current Iranian government.

“Mr. Khatami is free to meet with who he chooses and is able to speak freely in the United States — the very freedoms that do not exist in Iran,” a White House official said on the condition of anonymity.

“We expect that Khatami will face tough questions from his audience in the United States about the past and present behavior of the Iranian regime, especially with respect to human rights violations that occurred during his presidency,” the official added.

Talks between Carter and Khatami, if they materialize, would be politically poignant.

“Carter, who has every reason to be angry about the way in which the Iranian revolution undid his presidency over the hostage affair, is willing to meet, with no hesitation, a person who was president of the Islamic republic and who has never disavowed Ayatollah Khomeini’s actions when he was supreme leader,” said William Quandt, a national security staffer in charge of the Middle East during the Carter administration.

Oh! Cry me a river! Carter’s pathetic, paper-tiger handling of the hostage affair got him voted out of office by the American people. If I’m not mistaken, the rise of Islamic terror started on his watch.

According to my own hometown newspaper,(buried pretty deep in the article) Ted Stevens is the unknown senator blocking Tom Colburns Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act.

Still, those senators have ways to stymie things. One of the senators most criticized for his personal projects, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, has a hold of his own on Coburn’s bill to make public the spending patterns of the government. Called the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, the legislation calls for the creation of a database open to the public where citizens can track government spending.

“He’s the only senator blocking it,” Coburn said of Stevens.

Coburn and Stevens sparred earlier this year when Coburn attempted to block the so-called “bridge to nowhere,” a transportation project in Alaska to build a bridge that less then 60 people a day would use that would have received $223 million from the federal government.

Coburn said the purpose of the transparency act is to open up government so citizens can hold officials accountable.

Cpl. George Harley with the Fort Smith Police Department waves his arms to keep a horse from running into traffic on North Sixth Street Monday as police and animal control officers try to capture the animal that was wandering loose near Division Street. The horse, which was coaxed into a halter a few moments later, is owned by James Thompson and had escaped from a pasture at North 20th Street and Kelley Highway.

When I was a kid our family had a pinto (or Paint) horse named Scout. He was beautifully colored with a rich, brownish rust coat and white markings which looked like the map of the United States. Before Scout came along we had a donkey named Tarzan but he was so noisy some neighbors complained so my Dad sold him and bought Scout.

He lived in our back pasture and every morning it was my job (and my brothers and sister’s) to make sure Scout had his feed, hay, water and salt lick. When winter came Scout would stay in a shed that had an opening in the front. When it was especially cold my mother put one of my grandfather’s old wool coats on Scout’s back.

At night my Dad closed the gate to our front yard and let Scout out of the pasture to graze. In those long ago days we had no air conditioning so always had our windows open during the summer. I would wake in the morning to see Scout’s nose pressed into the window screen. Sometimes he woke me with a very wet sneeze.

One night Scout got into our garage which is where Daddy stored his feed and hay. He also had his Al Jolson records stored in the garage and Scout stomped on them. Scout would chew up every pecan and dogwood tree Daddy attempted to plant and kept my brothers’ ball-field well fertilized.

One time Scout panicked when it was storming and jumped down into the deep ditch between our house and our Italian neighbors, the Portas. The water was deep and my mother put on my Dad’s boots, grabbed a bridle and jumped into the ditch to pull Scout out. I will never forget how that frightened me. I thought both were going to drown.

When it snowed my sister and I loved to go to the back pasture to watch Scout make his “snow angels.” He loved to roll around in the snow and left a pattern not unlike what we made.

Our Dad bought Scout in Oklahoma and when he brought him home he was wild. An Indian man named Chief helped Daddy “break” him. Daddy taught me how to saddle Scout, bridle him, groom him and command him. Scout acted “age” appropriate with each one of us. He was spirited with me, gentle with my year old brother and a little slower with my little sister.

My brave Sgt. Major brother, who is a year younger than me, (and leaving for Iraq soon) didn’t fare as well with Scout. He simply wasn’t as interested in Scout as he was in the Cowboy boots he got every year and the kicking tee for his football but I recall that almost everytime he climbed up on Scout he would get bucked off.

My sister and I had a riding club and would venture out on Scout to meet our friends with their horses. Our grandmothers made us cowgirl outfits with matching flags and my sister and I rode Scout in the Rodeo Parade with our riding club. We did this for several years.

One day when Scout was staying at our uncle’s ranch I was home alone, sitting on the front porch, while my parents, brothers and sister were off on errands when a beautiful, shiny, black quarter horse came running down the road.

As if he had a right blinker on, he made a turn into our driveway and ran through our yard. I jumped off the porch and ran to the backyard, grabbing a bridle that hung outside the garage. Tommy, the boy across the street came running over and we set out after the horse.

First he ran into our back pasture and finding no way out turned around. He ran past us at the entrance but we kept following him. Down a side road he went and a lady ran out of her house with a bucket of oats.

While he stopped to sample the oats, I put the bridle on him and Tommy and I took him back to my house. We tied him to a tree in the front yard and I called the local radio station that broadcast lost pet reports. They immediately reported a found horse and within thirty minutes the owners arrived with a trailer to pick up the beautiful black horse.

All this happened within a two hour window. When my parents, brothers and sister got home and heard my story, at first they didn’t believe me but when Tommy Across the Street and the lady with the oats confirmed that the horse had indeed, come and gone, they were believers.

I had a hard time believing it myself.

When I was in the eleventh grade my Dad sold Scout because money was tight and we were growing up and needed clothes. I remember our mother taking us to buy fall clothes for school with some of the money. My sister bought a grey pleated skirt and a white shirt with grey and yellow striped patterns on it.

I chose a rust colored wool sweater and pleated skirt. My brothers also got some new blue pullover sweaters. All of us regretted the sale of Scout but at first we were at least able to hear about how he was from his new owners. Then one day we lost touch with them and I never saw Scout again.

Everytime my sister and I wore our outfits we called them our Scout clothes but we felt guilty at the same time. We missed Scout. Every year when the Rodeo came we went to the parade to look for Scout. Sometimes we thought we saw him and would run alongside the parade until he was out of sight.

Seeing the photo of the beautiful horse in our local news made me think of Scout and the horse that ran away. Ours is still a city full of horses.

Rudyard Kipling wrote The Man Who Would be King, Soldiers Three, Captains Courageous and many other classics which explored the height, length, width and depth of the nature of man. Still, it’s doubtful Kipling ever met the likes of the slick, audacious, scoundrel of New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin.

Evidence of a building linked to the myth of King Arthur and the knights of the round table has been found at Windsor Castle.

The circular structure was built by Edward III in the 14th century to house the round table intended to seat the original 300 Knights of the Garter. Archaeological proof of the building was uncovered by members of Channel 4’s Time Team in the castle’s quadrangle.

Although the stones have been removed, rubble in-fill where they were originally located remained in place. The show’s presenter, Tony Robinson, said the discovery could help settle years of debate among historians over the existence of the building. “The round table building is one of our most significant ever archaeological finds. It is something that helped to establish Arthurian legends of the knights of the round table.

They discovered pre-Roman flint also as well as other finds…….read on…….

I was thinking today, as I was arranging the yellow ribbon on the mailbox, of the present, great divide in our country, when, more than ever, we should be united (at the very least) for our fellow Americans who are in harms way.

Hitchens came to the end of his patience last night with the frivolous studio audiences’ jeers and laughter at his defense of our countries foreign policy and President Bush, so he delivered a middle finger salute to them. He was in essence, casting pearls before swine.

I feel Hitch did it for all of us who understand that whether or not we realize it, we are all fighting the war against Islamic fascism. Many of us want to win over Islamic fascism. Others shrug their shoulders and jeer as they did at Christopher Hitchens last night.

My son and my brother are both deploying to Iraq (from different units) at the end of September. Our son is a fine young, West Point grad, a Captain in the Combat Engineers who followed his father’s tradition after meeting the widow of General Douglas MacArthur when he was in the seventh grade.

She was in her late eighties at the time but still devoted to the memory of her late husband. She engaged my son in conversation, asking him where he was from and when he answered that he was born in Arkansas but had never lived there she told him that Douglas MacArthur was also born in Arkansas. When she discovered my son’s connection to West Point she urged him to go.

He was so impressed with Mrs. MacArthur that he asked for her autograph but all he had for her to sign on was a one dollar bill.

Until that time our son was an indifferent student. After meeting Mrs. MacArthur, he discovered the high standards that West Point required to be admitted. He knuckled down, determined to be admitted.

When he went to West Point, in his second year there, he asked me to frame the dollar and send it to him so he could hang it on his wall. He told me that sometimes he would look at it before a big exam for some inspiration.

My son is married, the father of a son who will be three in October and thinks his dad has gone to look for the red pickup truck he sold before he left for Fort McCoy.

My brother is a Gulf War Veteran, and recently became a Sgt. Major and is proud and always has been to serve his country and wants to continue to do so after his year in Iraq.

I write about my brother and my son because they, along with my husband (who recently retired from the Army as a full COL after thirty years) and other military members in our family have and are serving their country. But we are not unique. Every military family understands the sacrifice our own are making.

It makes me very angry to see the disconnect in this country between those who take the defense of our country seriously and those who hate President Bush so much that they are in essence condemning our country, our troops and all of us, to the hell of defeat, discouragement and possible Islamic domination.

Hitchens spoke for all of us who understand the threats against our country with that middle finger salute and his fierce obscenities. When we engage the left with logic they respond with jeers. So what else can we do with people who live in America but don’t appreciate our freedom or how we actually came to attain it? Hitch gets it. Our family gets it. Most of the right gets it. But we may lose this war and our whole culture of freedom because of those who purposely and cynically refuse to get it.

Excellent man. Delightful scene. Middle finger deliveries can be so eloquent when they come from the likes of Christopher Hitchens.

And to think, my son and my brother are going to be leaving our country in less than a month to serve in Iraq while silly, unserious people like those in Maher’s audience hoot and laugh off the threats our nation faces from Iran and other jihadists countries.

The frivolous featherbrains deserve more than a middle finger salute in my opinion.

I make it a practice to stay away from blogging about child killers or pedophiles because it’s just too heartbreaking but John Mark Karr, the suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case has the cops around our part of the country investigating whether he could have been here in 1995.

That year, six year old, Morgan Nick, a blonde little girl who resembles JonBenet, disappeared at a ballgame in Alma, Arkansas. She’s never been found.

ALMA - The suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case bears an uncanny resemblance to a composite sketch of the man police believe may have abducted 6-year-old Morgan Nick from an Alma ballpark.

Nick disappeared while playing with other children in June of 1995. JonBenet was found murdered in the basement of her Colorado home in December of 1996.

Alma Police Chief Russell White tells KFSM 5 NEWS that his department is investigating to determine whether John Mark Karr, the man arrested yesterday in Thailand for the murder of JonBennet Ramsey, could have been in the area at the time Morgan Nick disappeared.

He cautions, however, that Karr is not a suspect at this time, but that police are extremely interested in learning his whereabouts during summer of 1995.